You probably have a gray color in specular color. With linear workflow, these become numerically very different. It's not that GC reduces speculars, it's that speculars should be WHITE.

Editing 500 purchased shaders that only work with the light sets they were sold with is not how you go about adopting a linear workflow.

Linear workflow is about predictable results, in a wide variety of circumstances.

Traditional non-linear hackery is about predictable results USING ONLY WHAT YOU BOUGHT, usually TOGETHER.

The idea that lights are sold with a character is absurd - if you see such a thing, you're into lala land and will not find that set useful in linear workflow without pretty much rewriting all the shaders.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)